An information recording system for recording information on an optical disc includes a drive control unit and a system control unit. An optical disc includes an area which is managed by the drive control unit (for example, a lead-in area, a lead-out area) and an area which is managed by the system control unit (for example, a volume space). In some optical discs, a spare area for defect management is not pre-assigned in an area which is managed by the drive control unit.
Optical discs are, for example, DVD-RW discs and DVD-RAM discs.
An information recording system, for example, assigns a spare area in a volume space included in a DVD-RW disc. The volume space included in the DVD-RW disc is managed by a file system based on the UDF Specification. A system control unit refers to the file system and performs defect management at the time of data recording. Position information in the spare area and mapping information of the data which is recorded in the spare area are recorded in a sparing table which is recorded on the DVD-RW disc. (See, for example, the UDF Specification, “Optical Storage Technology Association, Universal Disc Format Specification, Revision 2.00, Apr. 3, 1998, page 31, http://www.osta.org”).
However, the information recording system cannot assign a spare area in a lead-in area included in the DVD-RW disc (an area which is managed by the drive control unit), and so the drive control unit cannot perform defect management. Therefore, the system control unit performs the defect management. As a result, the number of times that commands are issued between the system control unit and the drive control unit increases, which decreases the performance at the time of data recording.
The information recording system, for example, assigns a spare area in a lead-in area included in a DVD-RAM disc. The lead-in area included in the DVD-RAM disc is managed by the drive control unit, and the drive control unit performs defect management. Therefore, the performance of the information recording system at the time of data recording is high. The information recording system can assign a spare area of a fixed size in an inner area of the DVD-RAM disc, and can assign a spare area of an expandable size in an outer area of the DVD-RAM disc. (See, for example, Japanese Patent No. 3090320, pages 27 to 29 and FIG. 8.)
When a spare area larger than the lead-in area is necessary, the lead-in area needs to be expanded. Expansion of the lead-in area requires the size of the volume space to be changed and so is difficult.
The present invention, for solving the above-described problem, has an objective of providing an information recording system including a drive control unit and a system control unit for notifying the drive control unit of position information which indicates a position of a spare area assigned in a volume space, an information recording method for recording information on a recording medium having the volume space using the information recording system, the drive control unit, and a semiconductor integrated circuit.